Monday, 17 April 2017

To crowdfund or not to crowdfund

This is, if you've missed it, a collection of short supernatural fiction, and I didn't Kickstarter it this time. Why was that?
1. I'm not in it for the cash this time. The Kickstarter for The Age of Miracles was more of a success than I'd hoped for (and way more than I thought it'd be) and it made me more money in flat profit than most people ever make from that sort of book through a regular publisher. If I was going for the money grab I'd go for the Kickstarter, and let's be frank here, if that isn't a statement of how screwed publishing is as an industry, I don't know what is. This time, I wanted the pleasure of putting a thing together and putting it up for sale.

2. There are backers for The Age of Miracles who still haven't got their books. These are coming! But Amazon takes forever to get them out. I can't help thinking it's morally a bit questionable to start fundraising for something when you haven't finished fulfilling the last two things (because I've only just managed to get Cosmic Memory finished too).

3. I wanted something new to bring to the Swansea Comics and Gaming Convention in May. I'm doing a panel there – The Beginner's Guide to Designing a Role-Playing Game – and after last year, when I finished my talk and had everyone crowd round my table, I thought that since that's when Cosmic Memory will be released too, it gives me things to sell face to face.

Of course "not being in it for the money" and "still actually wanting to sell it" are not mutually exclusive, so it falls to me to say, please buy it! It has some of my best writing in it, and I hope that's enough to impress you.